The instructions were to uninstall SP1, not to do a System Restore. That's probably why you're having problems. SP1 and SP2 have been out for several years. You're awfully late installing them. What I would do at this point is to undo the System Restore and THEN uninstall SP1, if you really need to. Frankly any time I'm going to make a major change (like installing a Service Pack) I make a full system backup to an external hard drive so that I don't find myself in the pickle you're in.
When you've gotten your system back like you want it, I urge you to get yourself an external hard drive and a good 3rd party backup program. You can set it up to do everything automagically at the time and frequency of your choice. 1 TB external hard drives are about $70 these days and a really good FREE backup program is the Easeus todo backup free which you can download from
http://www.todo-backup.com/products/home/free-backup-software.htm . That can save you a lot of time and frustration the next time something like this happens. Sooner or later it happens to all computers for one reason or another.
Good luck.
I was instructed to install Vista service pack 1 and 2 so that I could use MS Essentials. I intended to use these tools to manage multiple blogs. They, well #1 I suppose, broke my internal wireless card and I was without WIFI. Thank God that there was a restore point set up, so I could go back, or I would probably still be trying to figure this out. Now my Explorer keeps crashing. Any ideas out there on this issue?

Chowhound
Comic Vine
GameFAQs
GameSpot
Giant Bomb
TechRepublic